Gilbert House (The Temple of the Blind #2)

  The Temple of the Blind: Book Two

  Gilbert House

  By Brian Harmon

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 by Brian Harmon

  Don't miss Book One of The Temple of the Blind, by Brian Harmon

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  Chapter 1

  When she saw that eleven o'clock had come and gone, Andrea finally gave up on Rachel’s call. Bitterly, she turned off her cell phone and plugged in the recharger.

  It didn't really surprise her that she was hearing less and less from her best friend lately. After all, Rachel had a boyfriend now and a part time job at the movie theater. New acquaintances were requiring more and more of the time that used to be reserved for old and that was perfectly natural.

  But the point was that Rachel promised. She said she would call. She said they could talk. But broken promises were becoming the rule rather than the exception lately when it came to Rachel Penning.

  It was just a stupid phone call. It shouldn't have even mattered to her. What did she care if Rachel didn't want to chat with her anymore?

  But Andrea was feeling unusually lonely lately. None of her friends seemed to have any time for her these days. Boyfriends and jobs and new interests were apparently crowding her right out of their lives. No one could find the time to visit or talk or even send her a quick text most days. And it hurt the most with Rachel, because Rachel had always been the best of her friends, the one she trusted most.

  She wondered if it was the loneliness brought on by her friends' disinterest that made her feel so emotional lately, or if she was only hurt so much by their disinterest because she'd felt so extraordinarily emotional. It was difficult to tell. Either way, she was sad. And it was because she’d been feeling so sad that she’d pleaded with Rachel to call her after work.

  She logged into her e-mail account, hoping that maybe someone wrote to her, but the only messages were three forwards from Wendy Gavon.

  Andrea regretted ever giving Wendy her e-mail address. She never actually wrote anybody. All the girl ever did was forward chain letters and stupid jokes. Sometimes she sent twenty or thirty at a single sitting and just lately things that she’d already forwarded had begun to recycle themselves, suggesting that either Wendy wasn’t actually reading the messages with which she was clogging other people’s inboxes anymore, or that she had the memory of a box of crayons.

  She deleted all three messages without reading them.

  She should have just gone to bed. It was Wednesday night and tomorrow was another school day, but she didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. In fact, she was afraid that if she crawled into bed right now, she would only start to cry.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt so down. Surely she couldn't be this upset over some stupid missed phone call. She was ordinarily a very cheerful person. Perhaps it was simply the common hormones of a teenage girl, her body in perpetual motion, still trying to bridge that seemingly impossible gap between child and woman, physically, chemically and emotionally. This unusual depression in a usually perky and optimistic personality was perhaps nothing more than the emotional equivalent to the pimples against which she and a cabinet full of facial cleansers had been waging war for the past six years.

  She browsed the web for another twenty minutes, finding nothing that interested her in the least. She simply wasn’t in the mood for anything she could find on the internet. Finally, she shut down the computer and stood up. She crossed the room and threw herself onto her bed, still feeling as if she might soon cry.

  She lay there on her back for a long time, staring up at the ceiling in the harsh glow of the overhead fixture, not really thinking anything, but merely pitying herself.

  Andrea Prophett was a petite girl, just a few weeks past her eighteenth birthday, with a skinny, girlish body and a fair, heart-shaped face. Her hair, naturally a darker shade of blonde, but currently dyed a light golden color, was cut just short of shoulder-length and spilled onto her pillow as she lay, revealing every detail of her pretty face to her empty bedroom. Her skin was smooth and fair, free of blemishes because she worked hard to keep it that way. On most days, her blue eyes shined perkily and her smile was bright and warm. Tonight, however, her eyes shimmered despondently and her pink lips were curled into a pouting frown.

  Unlike the other features of her face, which were all round and soft, her nose was straight, triangular, her father's nose. The left side was pierced, a small gold ring encircling her nostril. Her right eyebrow was also pierced, and she wore an array of jewelry in both of her ears, seven in one and eight in the other. She also wore a ring in her navel, which would have been made visible by her lifted shirt if there was anyone else in her room to look upon her.

  She had a fondness for jewelry and almost always wore lots of rings, bracelets and necklaces. She owned a jewelry box filled with pretty things with which she regularly redecorated herself. Rarely did she wear the same trinkets two days in a row. Typically, the only items that remained the same from day to day were her favorite watch, her class ring and a gold ring with a large topaz that once belonged to her late grandmother. Hardly any of it was actually worth anything. It wasn't the physical value that she cared for. As her father always joked, she quite simply liked shiny things.

  And she wanted more. She fully intended to get her tongue pierced someday. And maybe her lip as well. Her other eyebrow was also an option. She also wanted to get a tattoo as soon as she could talk someone into going with her. She hadn’t decided yet where she wanted it, but she knew for a fact that she wanted one. Perhaps she would eventually have several, but for now she didn’t have the courage to go alone.

  And what were the chances of anyone going to get a tattoo with her when she couldn’t even get her best friend to call her on the phone?

  When at last she turned and looked at the clock, she expected to find that midnight had come and gone and one o’clock was quickly approaching, but it was not yet even twelve.

  With a mournful sigh, she sat up, crossed her legs beneath her and began to remove her bracelets. She took off most of her jewelry almost religiously each night to avoid breaking or losing them in her sleep.

  She placed each of her bracelets in a neat pile on the nightstand and was reaching for her watchband when she was startled so fiercely by a noise at the window that a short, shrill scream escaped her throat before she could stifle it behind her hands.

  For a long moment she sat there, cross-legged on her bed, her hands pressed to her mouth, her heart pounding in her chest, staring wide-eyed at the window.

  From her angle, she could not see what it was, but something was there, pressed against the screen. It was making an odd noise, very soft, subtle, but very distinct. It was a sort of crinkling noise. It was a sound that kept her anchored to the bed in fear long after she should have recovered from her start.

  Elsewhere, there was only silence. Her scream obviously hadn’t awakened her mother, and her father, a fireman here in Briar Hills, would not be home from work until late tomorrow morning. The only sound to be heard over the strange crinkling was the distant chirping of crickets.

  She wished she could turn off the light. Sitting there in the seventy-five watt glow, she was in full view of
whatever stared back at her from the dark cover of the night. But the switch to the overhead fixture was located across the room by the door.

  Gradually, as the seconds ticked by and nothing more than the redundant crinkling was heard, her courage began to return. As silently as she could, she slipped off the bed and crept toward the window.

  In the first moments of her fear, she was certain that this thing at the window was some sort of monster, human or otherwise, attracted by the light of her window and now staring at her with brutal hunger, but it soon became obvious that the thing at the window was neither man nor beast. The crinkling sound she heard was not the gnashing of alien teeth but of plastic rustling in the breeze. Someone had wrapped a large manila envelope in a clear plastic bag, crept across her empty backyard, and fixed it to her window with a single strip of duct tape.

  She peered around the package, scanning the empty yard behind it. Her parents’ comfortable, three-bedroom home was located at the very end of Straight Creek Road near the northernmost city limits. A small patch of forest lay just to the north of the university campus and it was in these woods that her house was nestled. It was the darkness of this forest that made her anxious to see what might be there, but there was nothing to be seen that wasn’t there when the sun went down. The backyard was exactly as it was supposed to be, filled with ordinary moonlight and shadow from an ordinary early October evening. There was nothing out there except the manila envelope wrapped in plastic and taped to the window screen.

  Convinced that no ghastly beings were lurking beyond, she turned her attention to the envelope itself. There was a name and address scribbled across the front in black marker, but neither was familiar to her. Perhaps whoever left it did so by mistake. The university campus was within walking distance, after all, and it wouldn’t be the first time that a drunken student found his or her way this far from the dormitories.

  On the other hand, there was something eerie about the purposefulness with which this envelope was left for her. Whoever it was who had crept up to her window surely could have looked in and seen her sitting on the bed, surely could not have mistaken her for the person to whom this envelope was addressed. For one thing the envelope was addressed to a man. Secondly, would someone so drunk or confused have been so stealthy about delivering a package?

  She quickly closed the window and then the blinds, removing the envelope from her view and wishing she could remove it from her thoughts. A part of her wanted to know what was inside that envelope, but a bigger part of her was afraid of what she might find. Perhaps it was drugs, mistakenly delivered to the wrong house. In that case, let the true owner realize the mistake and come and get it himself. She didn’t want to get in the middle of something like that.

  Or perhaps something worse waited inside. There was no limit to the awful things her imagination could produce if she allowed it. Countless horror movie scenarios played through her mind as she backed away from the closed window with a shiver.

  She turned off the overhead light and finished removing her jewelry by the glow of her bedside lamp. She then crawled under the covers without changing into her usual sleepwear, switched off the lamp and tried to go to sleep.

  But for a long time, she lay awake, thinking about the envelope, about what might be inside. Who had been creeping around in her backyard, peering through her open window, watching her, unseen in the darkness? She wondered why someone would choose to deliver a package in such a way. Why would someone just slap it to the screen of her bedroom window without a word and then run away?

  And of course she wondered about the name that was written on the envelope.

  Who was Albert Cross?

  Chapter 2

  When she awoke the next morning for school, Andrea peered through the blinds and found that the envelope had not vanished during the night. It still clung there, the plastic damp with morning dew and still crinkling in the breeze. The unfamiliar name still blazed across the front.

  She dressed and left for school without saying a word about the envelope. She considered telling her mother, but that would only have worried her. She would just pretend, at least for now, that she was unaware of the envelope’s existence. Perhaps it would all solve itself if she just left it alone.

  She would have told Rachel about the strange envelope and how it had scared the hell out of her. Rachel liked that sort of thing. She was into eerie and mysterious stuff like that. She would no doubt want to return home with her that evening to see the mystery contents for herself. But Rachel chose to begin the day by insisting that she never promised to call her the previous night and Andrea decided she didn’t want to talk to the little bitch for a while.

  Perhaps for no other reason than the simple knowledge that her creepy little tale of the mystery envelope would have delighted Rachel, she kept it to herself all day.

  She trudged through her classes, constantly distracted by the thing that awaited her at home, and by the time she walked to her car that evening, she’d already convinced herself that she wanted to know what was inside. She hoped it was something really exciting, if only to spite her so-called best friend.

  Soon, she was back in her bedroom again, staring through the glass at the mysterious package and at the name scrawled across its front.

  There was something about that name…

  Who was Albert Cross? It was strange, but the name seemed to hold some sort of significance to her, despite the fact that she was sure she’d never heard it before in her life.

  Or had she?

  It was almost like a name from a dream, vaguely familiar, yet completely foreign. She supposed it was nothing more than a result of having thought about the envelope almost nonstop all day. Of course it seemed familiar to her now, after the name had been running through her mind all day.

  Finally, unable to take it any longer, she left her room and went outside.

  Her father stayed up long enough to greet her when she arrived home, as he almost always did, but had since gone to bed to catch up on sleep. He simply didn’t get the same quality of rest sleeping at the firehouse. Her mother had joined him, as she also usually did. She claimed that she could not sleep very well when he was not home and used the excuse to lay by him when he was there. Therefore, neither of them would be around to question her about the envelope.

  The afternoon sunlight, although quickly becoming replaced with the dull glow of an overcast sky, was much less intimidating than the moonlight that filtered through the trees in the night, but the ominous feel of the quiet woods remained. As she stepped out onto the back porch, a chill crept slowly up her spine and she found herself searching the trees for a pair of watching eyes. She stood there for a moment, looking out into the forest, listening to the distant drone of cars and the rapid knocking of a woodpecker somewhere among the trees. She considered for a moment just turning around and walking back into the house, but that would mean that the package would have to remain where it was, attached to her window screen, the secrets hidden within it taunting her all night long.

  She walked to her bedroom window, still expecting someone or something to appear from those trees, and began to peel back the tape.

  Albert Cross. The name rang through her head. Who was Albert Cross? Why was his name scribbled on an envelope that was taped to her bedroom window? She assumed that the envelope must be for Albert Cross. In that case, whoever left it here delivered it to the wrong house.

  The envelope in hand, she turned and took another look at the looming woods. This was all so strange. She felt so anxious about this envelope, and it was obviously nothing more than a stupid mistake, a misdirected package.

  Right?

  She turned and hurried back into the house, unable to shake that paranoid feeling that something out there was watching her. She would take the package back to her room and open it there. After she knew what was inside she could decide what to do next. If it did turn out to be something dangerous, she would wake her father. He’d know what to do. />
  She crept through the house, careful not to wake her parents, and closed herself up inside her room. There, she removed the envelope from its plastic bag and looked at the name and address. This Albert Cross lived in an apartment on Park Street, assuming that the name and the address both belonged to the same person. How could someone mix that up with Straight Creek Road? The two weren’t even close, phonetically or geographically.

  She wondered if there was any chance that the package was actually delivered properly. Was there some possibility that it was actually she who was supposed to receive this envelope? She doubted it. She could think of no logical reason for it. Who would go to so much trouble? And why?

  She took a calming breath and opened the metal clasp. A part of her actually expected it to explode, but it did not. She peered into the envelope, examining the contents before reaching in or dumping them out.

  There were no drugs inside. It was not a death threat or a bloody murder weapon or any of the other countless terrible things she’d imagined. It was nothing more than a sheet of paper and some newspaper clippings. And as she dumped these contents onto her bed for a closer examination, it quickly became apparent that there were no answers to be found inside her mystery envelope.

  Chapter 3

  Later, as that same afternoon crept toward evening, Albert Cross parked his car in the lot behind the apartment building where he now lived and killed the engine. He didn't immediately get out of the car. He sat for a while instead, thinking, staring unseeing at the bland red brick and the blinded windows of the building's back wall as the first drops of the approaching rain began to appear on the windshield.

  It had been more than a year since he and Brandy Rudman ventured into the tunnels beneath Briar Hills and discovered a world the two of them never could have imagined. And for more than a year he’d been wondering about that world and how it came to be. For the most part, those thoughts had at least been docile, coming and going the way all wonderings about unexplainable things come and go. For the past couple of days, however, he’d not been able to stop thinking about that place. This new and inexplicable fascination was almost as engrossing as those thirteen-month-old mysteries.